T-6.V-C Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom
1. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and must be. ²He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. ³Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. ⁴What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purifies. ⁵But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. ⁶This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. ⁷Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. ⁸This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. ⁹The ego’s beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. ¹⁰The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. ¹¹He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous.
2. The Holy Spirit does not teach you to judge others, because He does not want you to teach error and learn it yourself. ²He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. ³In the mind of the thinker, then, He is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. ⁴This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment. ⁵The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. ⁶God Himself has established what you can extend with perfect safety. ⁷Therefore, the Holy Spirit’s third lesson is:
⁸Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom.
3. This is a major step toward fundamental change. ²Yet it still has an aspect of thought reversal, since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant against. ³It has advanced far from the first lesson, which is merely the beginning of the thought reversal, and also from the second, which is essentially the identification of what is more desirable. ⁴This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first, emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. ⁵It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable.
4. While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second may still entail conflict to some extent, this step calls for consistent vigilance against it. ²I have already told you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. ³This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you must be. ⁴It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. ⁵This lesson is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur. ⁶Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. ⁷Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long, since they are mutually exclusive. ⁸As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognising this mutual exclusiveness, and still believe that you can choose either one. ⁹By teaching what to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately teach you that you need not choose at all. ¹⁰This will finally liberate your mind from choice, and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom.
5. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you to the Kingdom. ²You create by your true being, but what you are you must learn to remember. ³The way to remember it is inherent in the third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the others, and goes beyond them towards real integration. ⁴If you allow yourself to have in your mind only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it. ⁵Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. ⁶Since it is whole, you are teaching peace because you believe in it. ⁷The final step will still be taken for you by God, but by the third step the Holy Spirit has prepared you for God. ⁸He is getting you ready for the translation of having into being by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him.
6. You learn first that having rests on giving, and not on getting. ²Next you learn that you learn what you teach, and that you want to learn peace. ³This is the condition for identifying with the Kingdom, since it is the condition of the Kingdom. ⁴You have believed that you are without the Kingdom, and have therefore excluded yourself from it in your belief. ⁵It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be included, and that the belief that you are not is the only thing that you must exclude.
7. The third step is thus one of protection for your mind, allowing you to identify only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself. ²Altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are beyond question. ³The Voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for being without question. ⁴As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your mind, His perfect accomplishment is not apparent to you. ⁵This is why you must be vigilant on God’s behalf. ⁶The ego speaks against His creation, and therefore engenders doubt. ⁷You cannot go beyond belief until you believe fully.
8. To teach the whole Sonship without exception demonstrates that you perceive its wholeness, and have learned that it is one. ²Now you must be vigilant to hold its oneness in your mind because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose awareness of its wholeness and will be unable to teach it. ³The wholeness of the Kingdom does not depend on your perception, but your awareness of its wholeness does. ⁴It is only your awareness that needs protection, since being cannot be assailed. ⁵Yet a real sense of being cannot be yours while you are doubtful of what you are. ⁶This is why vigilance is essential. ⁷Doubts about being must not enter your mind, or you cannot know what you are with certainty. ⁸Certainty is of God for you. ⁹Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it is necessary against illusions.
9. Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. ²Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion. ³When you threw truth away you saw yourself as if you were without it. ⁴By making another kingdom that you valued, you did not keep only the Kingdom of God in your mind, and thus placed part of your mind outside it. ⁵What you made has imprisoned your will, and given you a sick mind that must be healed. ⁶Your vigilance against this sickness is the way to heal it. ⁷Once your mind is healed it radiates health, and thereby teaches healing. ⁸This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like me. ⁹Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, and those who choose to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what they believe.
10. The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe, and entails a willingness to relinquish everything else. ²The Holy Spirit will enable you to take this step, if you follow Him. ³Your vigilance is the sign that you want Him to guide you. ⁴Vigilance does require effort, but only until you learn that effort itself is unnecessary. ⁵You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made because it was not true. ⁶Therefore, you must now turn your effort against it. ⁷Only this can cancel out the need for effort, and call upon the being which you both have and are. ⁸This recognition is wholly without effort since it is already true and needs no protection. ⁹It is in the perfect safety of God. ¹⁰Therefore, inclusion is total and creation is without limit.